Mapping Topographies in the Anglo and German Narratives of Joseph Conrad, Anna Seghers, James Joyce, and Uwe Johnson
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MAPPING TOPOGRAPHIES IN THE ANGLO AND GERMAN NARRATIVES OF JOSEPH CONRAD, ANNA SEGHERS, JAMES JOYCE, AND UWE JOHNSON DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Kristy Rickards Boney, M.A. ***** The Ohio State University 2006 Dissertation Committee: Approved by: Professor Helen Fehervary, Advisor Professor John Davidson Professor Jessica Prinz Advisor Graduate Program in Professor Alexander Stephan Germanic Languages and Literatures Copyright by Kristy Rickards Boney 2006 ABSTRACT While the “space” of modernism is traditionally associated with the metropolis, this approach leaves unaddressed a significant body of work that stresses non-urban settings. Rather than simply assuming these spaces to be the opposite of the modern city, my project rejects the empty term space and instead examines topographies, literally meaning the writing of place. Less an examination of passive settings, the study of topography in modernism explores the action of creating spaces—either real or fictional which intersect with a variety of cultural, social, historical, and often political reverberations. The combination of charged elements coalesce and form a strong visual, corporeal, and sensory-filled topography that becomes integral to understanding not only the text and its importance beyond literary studies. My study pairs four modernists—two writing in German and two in English: Joseph Conrad and Anna Seghers and James Joyce and Uwe Johnson. All writers, having experienced displacement through exile, used topographies in their narratives to illustrate not only their understanding of history and humanity, but they also wrote narratives which concerned a larger global ii community. Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1900) and his Lord Jim (1904) compare to Seghers’ Transit (1944) and Revolt of the Fisherman from St. Barbara (1928) in that each explores crises of modernity. Instead of using the city, Conrad and Seghers utilize the sea, the harbor, and marginalized communities to illustrate thresholds of historical crises. The topographies echo a world affected by imperialism and particularly for Seghers, fascism. In my analysis of Joyce’s Ulysses (1921) and Johnson’s Anniversaries (1970- 83), I steer away from a traditional examination of the classic modernist city narrative. I show how the texts provide a broader and more encompassing look of the modern world through the memory of imperialism and fascism as it is reflected from outside the city limits, most notably on the coasts of the Mediterranean and Baltic seas, and on the banks of the Hudson and Liffey. Merging a socio-historical approach with a close literary analysis, my project seeks to explore an uncharted subset of modernism, and map out poetic, durable, and visual contours for literary and cultural studies, sculpting new textures for understanding history, memory, and humanity. iii Dedicated to my parents, who never said no. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to thank my adviser, Helen Fehervary, for her untiring intellectual support, encouragement, and enthusiasm which made this thesis possible, and her patience in correcting my stylistic errors and helping me in understanding the historical background of the project. I thank John Davidson for stimulating discussions, clarity, and a constant willingness to lend an ear when I needed a springboard for ideas. I am grateful to Alexander Stephan and Jessica Prinz for discussing various aspects of this thesis, and to Holger Lenz who gave time and effort in proofing parts of this dissertation. I also wish to thank Andrew Spencer whose guidance on Hellerau helped me to start formulating my method of research. And finally, I am indebted to Alex Boney, without whose emotional support I never would have finished this project. This dissertation was supported in part by funding from the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures and the Film Studies Program at The Ohio State University. v VITA August 31, 1975 . Born – Maryland, United States of America 1997 . .B.A. English and German, Georgia Southern University 2000 . .M.A. German Literature, The Ohio State University 2000 – 2001 . Study Abroad Fellowship at the Freie-Universität in Berlin, Germany, Germanic Languages and Literatures, The Ohio State University 1998 – 2006 . Bernard Blume Fellow, Graduate Teaching and Research Associate, The Ohio State University 2006 – present . Lecturer in German, Modern Classical Languages and Literatures, The University of Kentucky PUBLICATIONS Research Publication 1. Kristy R. Boney, “Aufstand der Fischer von St. Barbara.” LitEncyc.com. (2006). 2. Kristy R. Boney, “Die Toten auf die Insel Djal.” LitEncyc.com. (2006). 3. Kristy R. Boney, “Don’t Drink the Water: The Function of Topography in the Work of Anna Seghers and Joseph Conrad.” Proceedings of the Edward Hayes Research Forum. The Ohio State University. (2003). FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: Germanic Languages and Literatures vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract . ii Dedication . iv Acknowledgements . .v Vita . vi Chapters: Introduction: Mapping Topographies in the Anglo and German Narratives of Joseph Conrad, Anna Seghers, James Joyce and Uwe Johnson . 1 Defining topography . 1 The city’s topography in modernism . 8 Topography and water . 12 Topography and the journey, or experience . 14 1. Of Cruising Yawls and Old Harbor Towns: Navigating New Waters in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Anna Seghers’ Transit . 39 Waterscapes as a topographical paradigm in Heart of Darkness . 39 The sea as a topographical paradigm in Transit . 58 2. Topography and the Journey in Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim and Anna Seghers’ Aufstand der Fischer von St. Barbara . 101 Topography in Lord Jim . 101 Topography in Aufstand der Fischer von St. Barbara . 121 3. Washing in the Waves of Memory: Topography and Water in James Joyce’s Ulysses and Uwe Johnson’s Jahrestage . 150 The sea and the shore in Joyce’s Ulysses . 150 The sea and the shore in Johnson’s Jahrestage . 177 4. Inner and Outer City Limits: Mapping Urban Topography in James Joyce’s Ulysses and Uwe Johnson’s Jahrestage . 211 vii James Joyce’s Ulysses . 211 Uwe Johnson’s Jahrestage . 241 Concluding Thoughts on the Epic . 294 Bibliography . .301 viii INTRODUCTION Mapping Topographies in the Anglo and German Narratives of Joseph Conrad, Anna Seghers, James Joyce and Uwe Johnson “Where exactly did Keats listen to the nightingale? and which of the valleys and woods around London begot the ‘Ode to Autumn’? We happen to know, but the poems do not tell us. Wordsworth has less topography than we should expect, and so terrestrial and local a poet as Cowper has scarcely any. They condescend upon particulars, as must every poet, but not upon this class.” --John Buchan, Homilies and Recreations Defining topography In 1926, the Scottish writer John Buchan distinguished a need to understand the particulars of topography. In his essay “Literature and Topography” Buchan wrote that a “taste for topography is not the same thing as a love of the natural world; it is not even the same thing as an interest in landscape. There have been many eminent poets of nature who have scorned topography, and whose acute observation is so generalized that it is hopeless to identify it with particular tracts of the earth’s surface.”1 For Buchan it seems, topography is a means to identify specifically regions and areas in nature. Topography, usually associated with the science of geography, combines the Greek word for place (topos) with the verb “to write” (graphein). Thus, topography literally translates into an action, or the writing of place. While The Oxford English Dictionary (2005) defines topography as a “detailed description or delineation of the features of a locality,” the word today also implies action as it can mean the “practice of describing a particular place, 1 city, town, manor, parish, or tract of land.” For Buchan, an understanding of topography in literature is less an adoration of place and nature, and more a talent for making place into a verb. To write topographically is “to produce an impression of reality, to link fancy to solid and nominate earth.”2 In other words, the description of nature in the imagination becomes so telling and so clear, that its product is comparable to reality. Narrative theorist J. Hillis Miller in his Topographies investigates the term within English literature and suggests that a discourse on topography searches for (and he uses Thomas Hardy’s words) “the figure in the landscape.”3 From this perspective, topography is more concrete, more vibrant, and more dynamic than a backdrop or a setting. Although it might not be locatable in geography, topography has more texture than the flat visual of landscape, and is more precise in meaning than the terms place or space. In literature, topography becomes the summation of all these terms—setting, geography, landscape, place and space—ultimately becoming a means to present, illustrate, and give concrete shape to the more abstract ideas in narrative such as epic, myth, and history. Today, eighty years later, the term topography has lost clarity, and is often subsumed by—or interchanged with—the term space. In 1994, Charlie Bertsch and Johnathan Sterne were in a San Francisco book store and noticed a new section devoted to “Topographies.” The area was devised to offer a location for a variety of categories from virtual reality to gender studies and to cultural anthropology. Instead of appreciating the new section, the two decided that “Space is hot,” and they wrote an article on the misuse of space.4 Yet, space is everywhere. It surrounds, grounds, 2 evokes, comes between, disrupts, and displaces. In contemporary thought and criticism, space is a catch-all phrase that is used to map out an understanding of terrain in a variety of fields, such as linguistics, physics, cultural geography, literature, media theory, and anthropology.5 In literary criticism the term space evokes a variety of words trying to classify it—“place,” “landscape,” “geography,” and finally “topography” all denote ways of attempting to describe, compartmentalize, and locate the importance of space in a text.